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There was an article in Latitude 38 about her repairing the propeller shaft tube in a primitive location.

One of the Cal 40 flaws. Very difficult and expensive repair in a well equipped yard. She managed to get it done.

I'll try to find the article...

I found this one. An adventure I forgot she had:

Liz Clark Breaks Her Neck

October 29, 2012 – San Diego

Imagine an Olympic downhill ski racer falling down and breaking a leg on a bunny hill. That's probably how Liz Clark of the Santa Barbara-based Cal 40 Swell, who has been cruising French Polynesia for years now, feels right now. As many of you know, she was a champion surfer when attending UCSB, and has surfed some of the most dangerous tubes in French Polynesia. Yet it was while body surfing in small surf off Torrey Pines (San Diego) on October 8 that she broke her neck!

"The tide was dropping, and one particular sandbar beckoned. With half an hour to kill and a bladder full of tea, a swim seemed in order. So without another thought, I was zipping up my Patagonia R1 spring suit and hopping down the rocks, one fin in hand. I limped across the short strip of sand and collapsed into my beloved ocean at knee deep. Ahhhh!

"My second wave looked like a beauty. It approached from the north, standing up as I kicked into it. But as I plunged down the two-ft face, an odd warble cropped up, tossing me head over heels. Totally unexpectedly, my head hit the sand. My body was angled such that all its weight and momentum fell upon the forward part of my head, snapping it backwards in the process. “No way,” I thought. I came to the surface. 'Okay. I’m conscious.' Check. 'I can move my arms and legs.' Check. 'I’m okay. I’m okay.'

Liz wasn't really okay. Unable to get help because her cell phone was out of minutes, she drove herself the three miles to her sister's house, her neck feeling "unstable and weak," where she lay down in pain. She called a friend who is an ER nurse, who rushed the health insurance-less Liz to Sharp Hospital.

The results from the CAT scan showed no break, so Liz and her nurse friend were ecstatic. But Dr. Healy, double-checking the image, rushed in to say, "Don't move that neck brace!" He'd found that Liz had indeed fractured her neck at the C3.

Liz has been taking the injury with gratitude that she didn't damage her spinal cord, positive thoughts, and humor. Indeed, she's seemingly become obssessed with how ridiculous her hair looks from having to lie down all the time, posting photo after photo. Our favorite is a side-by-side comparison of her and Dog the Bounty Hunter. When you can laugh at yourself, you've got a whole lot going for you.

I also spent a year fixing fork lift trucks - I never dreamed I would do such a shit shit, shit job - then there was roofing in canada - fekkin cold

being a youtube star seems as realistic as a London lad wanting to be a cowboy.

Gotta hand i to the kids these days - they are media literate - look at the way the kids from Parkland have grabbed the media by the balls

goodonem

The successful youtubers - especially the sailors - work bloody hard at what they do and must put in an unbeleivable number of hours at their laptops and then uploading it all - and never missing their weekly deadlines.

Anyone who regards them as dissolute self indulgent lushes does not understand how much work is going on in the background.

I myself have nothing like their work ethic - I am happy to sit at the desk when the weather is crap - but if the sun comes out then I go sailing

Dylan

Kind of getting off topic, but how do you feel about the Jake Pauls, Drama Alert and similar huge youtube stars? I have noticed that even friends my age (and my ex who was about 5 years younger) talk endlessly how to become youtube stars in this sense, rather than the going out and doing anything and filming, which even the most banal hot chick in a bikini videos involve. It does seem a lot like being dissolute self indulgent wankers (though incredibly profitable). These are the ones that aggravate me, I watched several of the videos because I kept getting told they were an acquired taste. Not in any of their videos did I see anything resembling content, yet they are raking in staggering sums of money, and I don't see that as a lifestyle to aspire to. I'd like to think that if I have kids someday they will want to do something and share that, not just squabble on camera with other idiots doing nothing.

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Kind of getting off topic, but how do you feel about the Jake Pauls, Drama Alert and similar huge youtube stars? I have noticed that even friends my age (and my ex who was about 5 years younger) talk endlessly how to become youtube stars in this sense, rather than the going out and doing anything and filming, which even the most banal hot chick in a bikini videos involve. It does seem a lot like being dissolute self indulgent wankers (though incredibly profitable). These are the ones that aggravate me, I watched several of the videos because I kept getting told they were an acquired taste. Not in any of their videos did I see anything resembling content, yet they are raking in staggering sums of money, and I don't see that as a lifestyle to aspire to. I'd like to think that if I have kids someday they will want to do something and share that, not just squabble on camera with other idiots doing nothing.

I had to look them up

I found this

what I see is one heck of a lot work, creatively edited, well acted, well lit, innovative ideas -

self indulgent...maybe but he is a performer.

he has to come up with fresh ideas and content every day otherwise the beast dies.

As sailors we are uber self indulgent because we spend money, lots of it, on our pleasures - so we are bad in our own way.

Clearly he is not aiming at you and my guess is that his sponsors are trying to get access to his audience - young metrosexuals

he delivers them to youtube so they will pay him a higher rate per thousand views - maybe $3.50 per thousand

than this man gets - maybe $1 per thousand

basically, your eyes are not worth as much as those of your daughter/son/nephew

The advertiseers can get you with their potions and pills when you settle down to watch Downton Abbey with your wife

I make maybe 8 hours of films a year -and they reach around 10,000 old blokes per film - Jake Paul turns out much, much more material and reaches millions of people with every film.

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I read up about the area before I pass through and try to film the bits that are relevant to the history or geography. This comes from both books and the web.

Then I pass through an area, sometimes two or three times waiting for the light to come right.

The film goes onto a hard drive and sits there until I edit is up to 18 months later.

I watch the rushes, - maybe nine hours per 45 minutes, then I chop out all the unusable bits, move some of it around so that it forms a cohesive narrative.

Then I write the script, read it straight into the computer time-line - move evrything around to fit, then re-record the script in a decent acoustic - usually in a little space made out of boat cushions, stitch that in again, mix in the sounds of sailing, birds, music and me speaking on camera with the newly recorded script. Stick it all together, colour balance it, audio master it, export it youtube/vimeo.

I am lucky in that I can do all this at home with two screens. The bikini sailors do it in on laptops in the hot steamy hulls of 40 footers rolling around in some of those truly terrible anchorages.

Anyone who regards the bikini blogger spongers and panhandlers has almost certainly never edited a proper film in their lives.

A properly written and read script should sound like the free thoughts of a well ordered mind just appearing as if by magic. As you can see scripts are not really prose.

this is the one from the Kyles of Lochalsh film

All around the westward Isles – in every bay, in every inlet, on every beach and sandy bedded narrows between islands the water teams with billion upon billions of sand eels.

These microshoals live off the all but invisible copopods – delicately engineered organic nanobots - living machines that graze like cows upon the phytoplancton that blooms with the triple blessings of warm water, nutrients from the land and 20 hours of sunlight. The light fixing phytoplancton is the reason for the sparkling green tinged translucency of these waters. This environment is on supercharge through June and July and august.

The sand eels are not eels at all but one of three species of tiny – almost boneless -fish. They hang around the sandy bits because when its rough, or the currents are strong or predators are around then they bury themselves in the soft almost white hebridean sand – sometimes leaving just their heads sticking out.

The sandeels are food for the birds – and are most often photographed hanging ten at a time from the bizarre beak of a smugly conerned puffin –

The sand eels are food for the larger fish too - which are eaten by the seals, the porpoises, the dolphins and the whales – and us. It would be good if people stopped dredging for shelfish and fishing for sandeels... but they won't. Not in our lifetimes anyway.

I should tell you that sailing in scotland in the summer is not for those who love their beds too much. The seabirds that feast here are noisy early risers – they have important stuff to do so they kick off as soon as it starts getting light. By four the next morning the sun was fully up so I raised the hook and let the south going stream take us in the general direction of Skye

On a day like this you guarantee that a breeze will spring up, seemingly out of no-where – so we drifted through the glory of this summer's day.

Sure enough – around ten in the morning it arrived – a product of the differential heating effects of the sun on the mountains and the water.

The coast here is surprisingy low lieing. A bed of 3 billion year old rock studded with one billion year old sandstone islemeres that form a chain of weird pudding shaped mountains that go all the way down to skye.

We are sailing and drifting past Sutherland – the uk's largest and least populated county. The name derives from southland – which makes no sense unless you are a norse living on Orkney because Sutherland was the last toe hold of the Norse on the British mainland so to them it was the southland.

The Norse were pushed out of here by the Mackays – who had, in turn been pushed out of their soft scottish lowland Moray gaff when, in around 1160 or so, they fell out with King Malcolm the third –

If the British isles have an equivalent of the spartans then the Mackays fit the bill. Mountain and coastal people, pure pictish blood they say, every one of the men could climb rocks and cliffs, carry a 40 lb pack 20 miles in a day, take a hand at the oar or the winch, ride a rough horse or fight with claybeg, dirk and shield – they were early and serious adopters of fire-arms as soon as they appeared on mainland Britain. Their culture of songs and poetry dealt with love and loss and glorious death at the hands of a repected or long hated enemy with equal relish. Hard place – hard men. Just being a bloke up here was dangerous enough what with the cliff, the boats and the neighbours - selling the services of your sward arm, or your sonh's sward arm, for service overseas had always been a money spinner for the Mackays. Their clan symbol – a Dirk being thrust ever upwards – is reminscent of a modern single finger salute - the motto - manu forti translates as “with a strong hand”

Always fighting for the clann – raiding and counter raiding against the hated Rosses, Gunns, Sinclairs and most of all the Despised Sutherlands.

.

The Mackays really know how to pack a grudge that ripples on down through the centuries.

One of the hero Mackay clann chiefs and his beautiful young son and heir were mercillesly murdered in their beds during a truce while attending peace talks at a sutherland controlled castle in Dingwall. This was in 1370. Mackays will talk of this incident as though it happened less than a month ago.

The first time the Highlands seriously rose up to invade England was in 1715. On a tidal wave of fervour the Clanns gathered while the Military minded Mackays observed the disorganised rabble of highlanders. They could see that as the the hoard set off for London fuelled with passion and hot air but with no modern weaponry, no ammunition, no baggage train, no cavalry to speak of and buggerall artillary were on, as us english like to say - a very sticky wicket indeed.

So the mackays sided with the English Crown. 30 years later when Bonny Prince Charlie handed out coquettishly baby blue make scotland great again bonnets to his supporters – conned the clanns into having a second papist backed crack at London the Mackeys could see they were yet again on a hiding to nothing and joined the english at culludon where the Fiery highlanders were put back within their own borders – finally.

It was a cruel twist of fate that it was the sutherlands who, in the 1820 clearances finally completed the ethnic cleansing of the Mackays from this wonderful place.

The tide turned against us so we decided to spend the afternoon on a beach that had once belonged to the Gaels, then the Norse, then to the Mackays and now it is in sutherland territory.

– marvelous things bilge keelers. Ideal for Britains massive tides.

Try this in your your fin keel lozenge and see how it goes lads.

There was still a knot or two of wrong in the tide so it was on with the clonker – seeing this scenery weep past now I deeply regret the haste – at the time I was fully expecting that I would return and do a proper job of filming the Minch the following year - so we completely ignored Loch Roe and so many other places. The weather man was warning that any day now the scottish weather was going to revert to type.

The Mackeys held this land for 30 generations – it shaped them. Both the land and the people belonged to the Clann. For 750 years the Mackays had fought and died for this beautiful and unforgiving and completely unique slice of Britain – then they lost the land and the clann was scattered.

So if you know any men called Mackay and you see them in an occasional black sulk – Be nice to them – they might be thinking of their loss because the sutherlands took away everything they have ever held dear.

We turned into loch inver – and suddenly there were the tall masts of the charter yachts and we realised that we were back in the fringes of lozenge land. Nothing wrong with that of course – but a sign of approaching well travelled cruising grounds to come.

We were about to feel a bit less intrepid – but the sun was still shining and neither of us had ever seen Loch Inver looking quite so beautiful – so, so scottish. Lochs, mountains, modest roads.

In the highlands... they s take their war memorials and their military heroes seriously

Along with the quiet of the surroundings though LochInver is, amazingly, scotlands third biggest fishing port – 35 million pounds worth of fish flows through this shed every year - but you would hardly know it.. Foreign owned vessels scrape around every nook and corner of the minch, gut and palletise the bounty of these beautiful waters while it is still aboard – load this prime plastic boxed scottish protein into the capacous precisely chilled holds foreign controlled pantechnicans which head south. The good stuff is destined for the shining slabs of up market parisian poissoniers – the rest goes to spanish Food factories that churn out supermarket frozen paella by the tonne.

Sadly, The financial benefits of this trade barely touch the economy of scotland as the Trucks whizz the goodness of the sea southwards and in to the ever gaping maws of our fish loving southern european neighbours. This is certainly bad for scottish seas and does almost nothing for the the scottish economy – it is the main reason why the few remaining scottish fishing skippers voted to leave europe.

Does anyone remember when a breakfast kipper was cheap enough to not be an expensive once a year hotel treat?

That morning we drifted on southwards bouncing between calm patches but always with the tide underneath us. We watched as the wind rippled and flattened the water all around us. We passed Green island, Eilan Mor, Polly Bay, Garvie, Achnahaird and watched them come and go through the binocs.

There is something exquisitely satisfying about the perfect physics of a small yacht sailing. The way that gentle breeze gets this machine of carefully calibrated curved surfaces moving in almost any direction. It does it in near silence and the process leaves not a spec of pollution behind. Provided I discount the unguents on her hull and oils in her temporarily silent engine – I can kid myself that I am more or less at one with my surroundings. Just part of the flow of air and water around this delectable slice of the planet.

People sometimes ask why I sail so close to the edge – but the edge between the sea and the land is where life is at its sharpest. Wildlife thrives on environmental gradiants – along the fringes – where one environment abuts another.

I also know just enough geology to understand how these monumental landforms come to be the way they are – and the fact that they are in a continuous state of transition.

It makes them no less of a miracle.

I am, as you probably know by now, a salt marsh and mud creek sailor from East Anglia - this array of cliffs, rocks, islands, bays, headlands and lochs are almost overwhelming.

In this over rapid journey I am barely scratching the surface of the joys that lie around the fringes of the Minch. I am told that the outer Hebrides are wonderful.

These films probably deserve to be seen on a decent screen – put down the laptop and find this film on the youtube channel on your 55 inch smart TV - it won't all be perfect – but most of it is pretty good.

I take some trouble over the sound as well – and the choice of the music come to that

Just around the corner are the summer isles... When it comes to terraforming the person who did them makes slartibarfast seem like a ham handed bumbling amatuer.

This miniscule yet perfectly formed archipelago at the mouth of Loch broom gets its name from the fact that it was generally only inhabited through the brief summer months. Part of the population from the mainland would decamp to the islands where the fishing was amazing, birds and eggs could be plucked from the cliffs while the midges and mozzies seldom strayed this far off shore. It tended to be the younger fitter people who spent their summers here.... harvesting, processing and preserving the natural bounty of the place was hard work and a vital part of feeding the community through the long dark winter months. The older people tended to stay on the mainland – so the younger people had the place to themselves – out of site of the church and the faux disaproval of the elders - can you imagine anything more wonderful.

Generations of Highland love affairs were started and consumated in this idyllic spot with its many white sanded beaches and crystal clear waters.

As for my own impatient wife - The hook had barely hit the sand before she was in – She just waited a moment or two while the local swimmers sussed us out – then she was off - no stopping her sometimes.

we both hated lifting the anchor that day and promised to each other that we would return for a second, third or fourth bite of the summer isles. It is hard to imagine a more entrancing and intrigueing place.

The isles are dotted across the 12 mile wide mouth of loch broom – a magnificent body of water that thrusts 23 miles into the heart of scotland. We came on down the loch and spent the night on a council mooring near Ullapool – yet another off the shelf grid pattern Thomas Telford herring town designed to accommodate Clannsmen swept off the hills and out of the valleys to make way for the mighty cheviotdale sheep.

An hour from Inverness by road, it is, even today, far and away the busiest town for miles around – what with being a ferry terminal for the islands and a still a half decent sized fishing port.

We rowed ashore for, ironically enough, fish and chips – then back to the boat and turned in.

As we left Ullapool it was one of those superstill Hebridean mornings. It was a real joy to start a day's voyaging when the world is as bright and clear as this.

When your only time spent on the water is for your own pleasure it is easy to forget how important water transport is for highlanders and islanders alike.

For the past three long scottish days we had been sailing down the Minch. It is a massive area of generally sheltered water between the outer hebredes and the mainland. Sailing vessels have been criss crossing it for thousands of years – the fish and the birds have sustained hundreds of tiny communities along literally thousands of miles of rock strewn coastline.

The norse, who owned controlled and exploited it for 300 years called it Skotlandsfjörð

It is 45 miles wide and 70 miles long, was the site of a massive meteorite strike and makes the Solent look like the shallow crowded ditch it really is. So much to explore and enjoy for an edge sailor.

I apologise if things start to move a bit fast now but impending crap weather combined with a Calender, the gently draining bank account and the demise of DVD sales meant that we were having to push on a bit to find somewhere safeish and cheapish to dump the boat for the expensive summer months.

I am coming back to do a decent job of the Minch – I promise – I hope.

We headed into Gairloch seeking a quiet spot where we could sit out a cold front that was due to sweep through that night. The wind was going to be all over the shop so we tucked outselves away on a mooring near the pub at Badacrow.

by 11.30 at night the worst had passed through – twilight was a mere gap in the gloomy clouds.

We came down gairloch and turned south east heading down the lower Minch and we found ourselves with a bit of usable breeze. It was changing around all over the shop in the wake of last nights front and under the infleunce of the mountains. We sailed through a few squalls, windless spots and downpours – but the ever faster tide was funnelling nicely down heading for the gap at the Kyles.

The journey down the Kyles between Skye and the mainland are one of the highlights of any passage along this coast. The mountains come marching right down to the waters edge and funnel the power of tide through the narrow – and fairly shallow – by scottish standards anyway – gap between peaks.

Now I love a good tide – the stronger it is the faster I go – and they don't come much better than the Kyles between Skye and the Mainland. The water in the minch can either go around the top of skye or take a short cut through the narrows where the sea has chiselled a gap in the chain of sandstone islemeres which become the island of Skye. Water will always take a short cut if it can – so the stuff whizzes backwards and forwards through here at up to eight or more turbulant knotts

Good fun.

When we came out from behind skye the wind started to really push the boat along – with the help of a three knots of tide of course.

We drifted close to Sandaig – tarka the otter Gavin Maxwell's long abandonned gaff - I should like to land there one day.

Onwards down the coast we came past muck and eigg and finally into Arisaigs tiny loch. The yard boat was waiting for us, they breasted up as we came in ….and before I was emotionally ready they brought her ashore.....

and the best summer sail of my life was over.

I am 62 now – I have been to three schools, one boarding, an ag college and university, sea cadets, rugby, sailing, newsrooms and tough location TV crews. I have lived and worked in a male outdoors world. Over that time I have got to to know four men called Mackie - well enough to call them friends anyway They were all good sportsmen, physically impressive blokes, always good team players – obeyed the rules - weight carriers - indomitable.

Two had been in army combat divisions , another was a copper. The fourth was the boss of a roofing crew. Good men to have on your side – brave - up for the challenge – high energy I would have said – terrible if they go sour on you though. All four could occasionally show a deep streak of mournful melancholy – but it was generally short lived – a fresh challenge or a good night out with the boys always brought them around.

I now have a slightly morbid game I play – when I see a war memorial I count the Mackays – they have always punched above their weight in military matters – and still do today.

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Delos films usually name the editor in the credits and each filmed seems to be edited by one of the Crew. from memory, Karin does quite a lot of it but Bryan and Brady as well. Elisebeth I believe has also been credited as an editor on a couple of the recent films.

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Delos films usually name the editor in the credits and each filmed seems to be edited by one of the Crew. from memory, Karin does quite a lot of it but Bryan and Brady as well. Elisebeth I believe has also been credited as an editor on a couple of the recent films.

they are amazing the way they produce so much material... their work ethic is amazing. They are a huge success story. It will be really interesting to see how they develop. The do an excellent mix of real sailing and floating soap opera - who is sleeping with who sort of stuff. How far behind reality are they running?

I have skipped through the occasional episode and I always have a peak at their statistics both on youtube and patreon. Needless to say they blow me out of the water on all counts - but that is okay - they deserve their success.

Goodonem

D

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they are amazing the way they produce so much material... their work ethic is amazing. They are a huge success story. It will be really interesting to see how they develop. The do an excellent mix of real sailing and floating soap opera - who is sleeping with who sort of stuff. How far behind reality are they running?

I have skipped through the occasional episode and I always have a peak at their statistics both on youtube and patreon. Needless to say they blow me out of the water on all counts - but that is okay - they deserve their success.

Goodonem

D

Dylan, even the amount of effort you put forth seems like rather a lot to me. Does it detract from your ability to enjoy the moment when you're sailing?

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there are plenty of times when I am just sailing - the camera is there in the cockpit

batteries full, sd card ready. If I see something I just pick up the camera and film it. I know where the interesting places are from my early research and I want to see them anyway. So many I still have to see. There are thousands and thousands of Brent geese on isla and Jura in the autumn - the singing sands of Eigg, Sandaig of Gavin maxwell fame.

Lots times I am doing no more than a stills camera person - recording nicely framed shots for the pleasure of it

the stills man holds his camera for one click of the shutter. I hold mine for ten seconds. I also look for things moving in the frame - a shadow on a deck, a bird flying off, wakes, waves

the editing is mostly dull digit moving - a monkey can make a sound mix that works.

the scripting is okay - I have been a hack for 40 years so sticking words together is pretty easy. In that script above I precis 1200 years of history of the Mackays into about 2 mins. So far no complaints.

Colour balancing is the dullest thing known to man - each shot has to be adjusted so that it leads into the next. Each audio clip has to have a fade at the beinning and a fade at the end. They now look pretty good on a big telly and using a decent soundbar

I think some of the films will stand the test of time but...

I edit the films so that I can afford to sail in the finest place I have ever been to.

The financial equation was shit out of balance, Hence selling the boats - but not having a boat in scotland is saving me £6K a year while I am still making films and people tap on them not to buy me anti-foul but as a sort of digital round of applause - a few pennies in the buskers hat

What I need to do is to make the most of the remaining material while I work towards accumulating enough cash to buy a warm, reliable, seaworthy boat

the scripts and the way that I read them do seem to be a major differentiator at the moment

Plus no bikinis in my films - just my jowls wobbling in a scottish breeze

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what I see is one heck of a lot work, creatively edited, well acted, well lit, innovative ideas -

self indulgent...maybe but he is a performer.

he has to come up with fresh ideas and content every day otherwise the beast dies.

As sailors we are uber self indulgent because we spend money, lots of it, on our pleasures - so we are bad in our own way.

Clearly he is not aiming at you and my guess is that his sponsors are trying to get access to his audience - young metrosexuals

he delivers them to youtube so they will pay him a higher rate per thousand views - maybe $3.50 per thousand

than this man gets - maybe $1 per thousand

basically, your eyes are not worth as much as those of your daughter/son/nephew

The advertiseers can get you with their potions and pills when you settle down to watch Downton Abbey with your wife

I make maybe 8 hours of films a year -and they reach around 10,000 old blokes per film - Jake Paul turns out much, much more material and reaches millions of people with every film.

Dylan

That was actually a lot funnier than the videos I've been shown of him, I laughed and enjoyed it. If that was typical of the videos I'd seen, I would not have the same opinion of him, and from the ideas I've heard that is not the type of thing people are wanting to emulate. That I would think was good, it took planning, it was funny etc.

Here are two examples of more what I'm talking about, which is more what people seem to want to be like, not as bad as many of them, but still. To save you time if you don't want to watch it, he doesn't smash anything as far as I can see, just gets kicked out of a shop. Most of the ones I've been shown, are youtube stars complaining about the other stars not making content and just complaining about others not making content(and repeat). I'd much rather watch any sailing video than that, even if the boat doesn't go anywhere!

Dylan: I guess I'm an old fart early then(I'm 30 this year). I think your videos are incredible, there's an art to what you do, and an amazing amount of effort and thought put into them and I enjoy every one, I had no idea you had such a detailed script and put so much time into them that just makes it more impressive. That video that was linked here by Ajax was funny, I wonder if he used to produce funny shows and then just got tired of it and was making enough money not to bother.

I just don't see things like the following videos as an understandable goal, but it has made him rich and I am broke, so I am clearly not a good judge.

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It appears to me that all the delos crew are quite creative and get involved with the filming and production. I'm guessing they are invited because of their abilities to contribute to the process. I think there are six people working on their stuff, which is why it's so good.

1

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you can see that he produces a nine minute video every day of the week - no-one can produce consistently good material. But people want to spend those nine minutes a day with him. They do not know what he is going to do. It is like the soaps on telly - they feed you stuff so fast that you cannot really process it.

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The bikini sailors work hard at what they do and they really churn the stuff out. They are a bit a like floating soap operas

The soap opera comment about these vlogs gets made a lot but I don't think it could be further from the truth. Soap operas are filled with drama about who slept with who and how that person was actually the other persons long lost sister who was married to that other cat who was the twin brother of the other person who died in the mysterious car accident. The vlogs are more fairy tales or as Weezer put it in 'Island in the Sun'

When you're on a golden seaYou don't need no memoryJust a place to call your ownAs we drift into the zone

On an island in the sunWe'll be playing and having funAnd it makes me feel so fineI can't control my brain

We'll run away togetherWe'll spend some time foreverWe'll never feel bad anymore

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Wow...just the screen shot is repellent enough to ensure that I never click on it. I am obviously not the target demographic.

And it becomes a self perpetuating cycle(just as with any platform I suppose) where the most popular type of content eventually grows to define the platform because it gets reproduced, and copied, which means the signal to noise ratio gets worse... and the audience becomes more used to low quality/low content so it gets reproduced more and gets worse again... and repeats again... It was one of the few topics I really paid attention to at Uni, though the discussion was around photography the issue is essentially the same. I didn't expect to see it so clearly only a decade later. I do not think I could even break 100k views on a trip today if I were to go along writing and photographing as I did before.

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At Uni, did your instructors ever discuss whether the platform would eventually be abandoned once the content quality declined to a certain point or do people just keep consuming?

Interestingly what we're seeing on youtube proved them pretty much right on the money as far as what is popular, but they forgot to factor in ad revenue as a source of income. They described it in a simple way, the first part was to think of it like a signal to noise ratio, as the following takes place the signal to noise ratio gets worse until everything is noise and nobody cares.

To paraphrase their lecture from memory "40 years ago imagine a 2' circle with a 1' circle inscribed inside of it. The 2' circle would be the total number of photographs taken, the 1' circle the number of high quality photographs taken by professional photographers. By 2000, the outer circle would still be 2', and the inner less than 1/4" across. So the simple fact is that people are now far more likely to be exposed to only amateur photography, shot by people of relatively equal skill as the consumer. As this trend continues, it becomes less and less likely that the consumer will be exposed to high quality media outside of advertising and therefore less interested or even able to differentiate between and low quality, the same time the consumer will become the producer of content as well given that the tools required are becoming ubiquitous, and that because they no longer differentiate between the two, and also see that they have access to the tools, they will no longer feel that the professional has any value, and the price paid for producing will drop until it is no longer financially viable as a way to make a living and becomes relegated to being a hobby. The Jake pauls and similar prove that it is still possible to make money, without high production values, which is an interesting twist on the theories we were taught, that the consumer no longer differentiates by quality, but is indirectly a source of revenue for the producer. They noted the one exception to that rule is finding a narrow niche to occupy, outside of the bread and butter work of advertising/weddings. Although these days, I understand advertisers are even more using stock photographs, and weddings are often shot by friends, so even those are dwindling. One example given was to get into horse show/horse photography(typically wealthy consumers, infrequently accustomed or interested in shooting unless it's also a hobby for them, and the photographs are often used to show off to other wealthy consumers so they are still prepared to spend money to have a status symbol, but you have to live in the right place for that)."

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It is depressing how much of society comes down to the simple training methods we learned in Rat Lab (Psych 204?) as freshmen. Even more depressing when I realize that I personally have succumbed to them.

Operant conditioning

Partial reinforcement schedules

Pavlovian responses

IIRC, the way to get the very strongest response from a rat is to only provide a reward once in a while, at a random frequency. He will frantically click the link, hoping for that rare treat, and it is very difficult to make him stop.

If you give him a treat every time he clicks, then he’ll just wander away the first time a treat doesn’t come.

Fast food restaurant menus, dating website profiles and advertisers have all figured out that it doesn't matter if the thumbnail matches the product so to speak

8 hours ago, Ajax said:

So, when quality declines people don't get fed up and go away, they just can no longer differentiate between high quality and low quality (or they don't care to?) Am I understanding you correctly?

This sounds like a very bad dumbing down of society.

It's a two part process, we are pretty adaptable as a species. We generally adapt to whatever is most popular as being a "good" product. So it's a combination of not being able to differentiate any longer, and not caring. A big part of the process is the tools becoming widespread and the consumer becoming the producer of content. The I can do that too, so it isn't a valuable skill worth paying for mentality.

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Fast food restaurant menus, dating website profiles and advertisers have all figured out that it doesn't matter if the thumbnail matches the product so to speak

It's a two part process, we are pretty adaptable as a species. We generally adapt to whatever is most popular as being a "good" product. So it's a combination of not being able to differentiate any longer, and not caring. A big part of the process is the tools becoming widespread and the consumer becoming the producer of content. The I can do that too, so it isn't a valuable skill worth paying for mentality.

Chisels and mallets were available to everyone in Rennaissance Italy but not everyone was running down to the quarries to sculpt a "David. "

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Chisels and mallets were available to everyone in Rennaissance Italy but not everyone was running down to the quarries to sculpt a "David. "

I think you are right

writing tools - pen and paper have been around for a long time - that does not mean that we all write great literature. Sure there is more of it and the average goes down - but there is still excellent writing

some of it on here.... it is submerged under tonnes of bollix but there is still the odd Gem

That is the same as filmed travelogues.... we all have access to the means to make wonderful travel series.... but not everyone has the aptitude or determination.

The style of films is developing - and always will. In the years since I have been making films - maybe 30 - the grammar has changed. Shots last for two seconds or half a second. People used to train you to hold the camera on something and count to five. "Anything less than five seconds is not a shot." That is certainly not true anymore.

I think that us humans continuously build on those who went before, we follow trends, fashion if you like. I am always amazed that my wife decides that one colour is lovely this year and not lovely next year. But we are all susceptable to fashion in boats, cars and clothes. Look at the way boats are changing. Scoop sterned lozenges with dead straight bows and vertical windows were the thing - now we have cheese wedges with twin wheels and double bedrooms. The rise of the 40 foot cat has been amazing.

Among the sailing vloggers there are a lot of really innovative, driven and clever people whose work ethic leaves me speachless. On the other hand there is a lot of tosh that will not last the course - lots of these vlogs have gone dark and deserved to have done so.

I think it is interesting that quite a few of the sailing vloggers have declared that they have seen enough of the hot places and are now going to take their boats to cold places. I fear that the west coast of the UK is going to get visited by lots of large cats - I am not sure how the harbours will cope but I think it is wonderful that these youtube films have sparked an interest in sailing in a generation that would never have taken to the water.

You only have to listen to the way that the people in the Daley adventure throw their vowells around to realise that there is a new type of people coming into sailing - and that is a brilliant thing.

The thing about the web though is that to be successful you have to keep feeding the beast - hence the weekly posting of films even if nothing has happened. If they come to scotland there are going to be a lot of 16 minute films entirely consisting of people sitting in cabins waiting for the rain to stop. The vloggers will also have to learn a bit about using light. Filming in bright carribbean sunshine is a lot easier than coping with northern light.

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Chisels and mallets were available to everyone in Rennaissance Italy but not everyone was running down to the quarries to sculpt a "David. "

Were they though? I am not sure that your average laborer could afford them. An interesting question: What would: a set pf chisels, a mallet, tools to sharpen them, a platform or bench to hold a block, plus a block of carvable stone, and transportation for said block cost as a percentage of income for an average labourer in Italy at the time as compared to a cell phone with camera or cheap camera as percentage of income for an average worker today.

I believe there was more to the presentation about ease of use, (think manual film cameras vs phone cameras that do most things automatically) and universal adoption(Cell phone cameras again playing a part of it) as well as the ease of storing images and the method they are consumed(print vs digital again) but the lecture was a long time ago, so I suppose I did ok

For myself it was actually something of a relief in a funny way, I realized during the lecture that if everyone is recording all the time then many will experience something amazing and temporary and spend all their time looking at it through a small screen, only to never look at it again. That actually led me to shoot less, even when traveling and to spend more time just enjoying what I was experiencing instead. I have had a few friends give me shit about it, and the quality of my pictures was definitely dropping even before I sold my cameras, but we only get to experience things once, and sometimes that's enough. There are maybe 10 pictures I truly regret not taking in all that time, but knowing I couldn't made the memories stick in my brain, whereas if I had taken them I don't think I'd still remember them the same now.

50 minutes ago, dylan winter said:

I think you are right

writing tools - pen and paper have been around for a long time - that does not mean that we all write great literature. Sure there is more of it and the average goes down - but there is still excellent writing

some of it on here.... it is submerged under tonnes of bollix but there is still the odd Gem

That is the same as filmed travelogues.... we all have access to the means to make wonderful travel series.... but not everyone has the aptitude or determination.

The style of films is developing - and always will. In the years since I have been making films - maybe 30 - the grammar has changed. Shots last for two seconds or half a second. People used to train you to hold the camera on something and count to five. "Anything less than five seconds is not a shot." That is certainly not true anymore.

I think that us humans continuously build on those who went before, we follow trends, fashion if you like. I am always amazed that my wife decides that one colour is lovely this year and not lovely next year. But we are all susceptable to fashion in boats, cars and clothes. Look at the way boats are changing. Scoop sterned lozenges with dead straight bows and vertical windows were the thing - now we have cheese wedges with twin wheels and double bedrooms. The rise of the 40 foot cat has been amazing.

Among the sailing vloggers there are a lot of really innovative, driven and clever people whose work ethic leaves me speachless. On the other hand there is a lot of tosh that will not last the course - lots of these vlogs have gone dark and deserved to have done so.

I think it is interesting that quite a few of the sailing vloggers have declared that they have seen enough of the hot places and are now going to take their boats to cold places. I fear that the west coast of the UK is going to get visited by lots of large cats - I am not sure how the harbours will cope but I think it is wonderful that these youtube films have sparked an interest in sailing in a generation that would never have taken to the water.

You only have to listen to the way that the people in the Daley adventure throw their vowells around to realise that there is a new type of people coming into sailing - and that is a brilliant thing.

The thing about the web though is that to be successful you have to keep feeding the beast - hence the weekly posting of films even if nothing has happened. If they come to scotland there are going to be a lot of 16 minute films entirely consisting of people sitting in cabins waiting for the rain to stop. The vloggers will also have to learn a bit about using light. Filming in bright carribbean sunshine is a lot easier than coping with northern light.

D

I like your perspective better than mine, and you would certainly know the subject better so maybe there's hope yet. Interesting about light, with photographs I struggled with the opposite, rich colours seemed(from memory) much harder to get in bright cloudless sunny places like central America than here.

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I think it is interesting that quite a few of the sailing vloggers have declared that they have seen enough of the hot places and are now going to take their boats to cold places. I fear that the west coast of the UK is going to get visited by lots of large cats - I am not sure how the harbours will cope but I think it is wonderful that these youtube films have sparked an interest in sailing in a generation that would never have taken to the water.

Can’t see it myself.. It has got busier over the past 15 or so years but you only notice this when you go to the honey pots in ‘high’ season.

There is one cruising cat knocking about here, maybe our changeable weather keeps them away? Bashing into a short, steep sea isn’t their forte and there arent so many pontoons they can tie up to.

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A curious thing I've been made aware of is that these days YouTube/Google is seizing upon any opportunity to demonetize videos, or atleast have them flagged for the first 24-48hrs when the most number of views happen. This has now come to include shots of fish being bled out & filleted. Cooking cleaned bits of fish is okay, but the actual slicing & dicing is now deemed too graphic. I have noticed the last few Delos vids have avoided the bloody mess of processing their catch, I'm guessing they won't be doing much pig hunting once they get to Florida or back around to the S.Pacific.

I wonder how many sailing vloggers have been Scroogled bleeding out a tuna on deck?

'

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A curious thing I've been made aware of is that these days YouTube/Google is seizing upon any opportunity to demonetize videos, or atleast have them flagged for the first 24-48hrs when the most number of views happen. This has now come to include shots of fish being bled out & filleted. Cooking cleaned bits of fish is okay, but the actual slicing & dicing is now deemed too graphic. I have noticed the last few Delos vids have avoided the bloody mess of processing their catch, I'm guessing they won't be doing much pig hunting once they get to Florida or back around to the S.Pacific.

I wonder how many sailing vloggers have been Scroogled bleeding out a tuna on deck?

'

adsense revenue is all but irrelevant

if la vag/delos gets 250,000 views on a film that is $250 on scroogle money

but that same film will net them $10,000 from their 1500 patrons who are chipping in $5 plus a head per film.

Having been dancing with scoogle for a decade now... the rule changes come at you on an almost monthly basis

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if la vag/delos gets 250,000 views on a film that is $250 on scroogle money

but that same film will net them $10,000 from their 1500 patrons who are chipping in $5 plus a head per film.

Having been dancing with scoogle for a decade now... the rule changes come at you on an almost monthly basis

"a dynamic environment"

D

Then you'd know it's not just the suspension of Adsense when you get flagged, but also age restriction penalties which also stop you from being listed in video recommendations. And losing out on the all important views. Receive enough flags and your channel could be permanently age restricted, which is essentially Youtube death.

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^^^^ Thanks for that Dylan. That was very interesting hearing about how clickbait is killing off quality channels, quality channels are killing themselves off by clickbaiting and a content providers subscriber platform ultimately being meaningless if they get view starved.

A good recipe for content providers to band together and shake UTube up, but unfortunately impossible to implement I suspect.

If there is no scroogle money then the future for content providers seems to be "pay for view" . This is a similiar merry go round to cable TV. When it started it was by promoting itself as advert free platform, then overtime started pushing adverts in conjunction with subscription.

This is all very circular.

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^^^^ Thanks for that Dylan. That was very interesting hearing about how clickbait is killing off quality channels, quality channels are killing themselves off by clickbaiting and a content providers subscriber platform ultimately being meaningless if they get view starved.

A good recipe for content providers to band together and shake UTube up, but unfortunately impossible to implement I suspect.

If there is no scroogle money then the future for content providers seems to be "pay for view" . This is a similiar merry go round to cable TV. When it started it was by promoting itself as advert free platform, then overtime started pushing adverts in conjunction with subscription.

This is all very circular.

It will happen, it just won't be on Youtube, it will be some other form of media delivery. Youtube will be the new cable which was the new...

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^^^^ Thanks for that Dylan. That was very interesting hearing about how clickbait is killing off quality channels, quality channels are killing themselves off by clickbaiting and a content providers subscriber platform ultimately being meaningless if they get view starved.

A good recipe for content providers to band together and shake UTube up, but unfortunately impossible to implement I suspect.

If there is no scroogle money then the future for content providers seems to be "pay for view" . This is a similiar merry go round to cable TV. When it started it was by promoting itself as advert free platform, then overtime started pushing adverts in conjunction with subscription.

This is all very circular.

one difference is that cable passes on some of their earnings back to the content creators while the youtube model is "woo hoo - it is all free at the point of delivery but we own all the data and all the advertising revenue" . One of the ways I know a film has finished uploading is the notice from google that they have seized the rights to the film I have just posted which comes within seconds of the film being uploaded.

you tube is tentatively trying subscriptions or pay per view - but I think that once you have given people stuff for free going back on that is tough.

Having said that, Netflix/Prime is changing people's attitudes to on-line content -0 but only on the fringes.

I always send out nice thank you emails to people who chip in - and sometimes ask the new ones what prompted them to join the tappers. A common answer is along the lines of "we pay $10 a month for netflix and I watch a couple of hours a week- I enjoy your films as much as netflix so I decided to wing you some paypal cash". Some pay per film - some pay after a snow induced binge watch. I can track storms across America by the youtube hits.

Having said that 100 per cent of people who use netflix cough up but with la vag and delos only 0.4 per cent who watch cough up.

Around three per cent of the people who watch my films chip in - which is a much higher proportion but from a much lower base. A good hit for one of my films might be 8,000. Delos/La Vag are up in the 200,000s per film - some are millions with the right click bait.

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you tube is tentatively trying subscriptions or pay per view - but I think that once you have given people stuff for free going back on that is tough

Dylan the whole thing facinates me in terms of how quickly things evolve whether it is content or the platform. One thing which I think you are all over is the Wide Screen/HD quality content experience a lot of viewers will be demanding and which is obviously still in its infancy, so currently not reflected in views and as a consequence of that many content providers don't see that yet as they chase scroogle money and or build a Patreon base.

The cream always rises to the top eventually.

The above off grid couples video whinge missed one thing though. I don't subscribe to many channels and certainly not the Vagamites and lesser popular ones. However UTube's algorithm clearly monitors my "sailing" content viewing preference, so they all seem to come up as recommended viewing regardless if I have subscribed or not. Their Beach Soccer Cheerleader vid suggestions are getting a bit tiresome though..I must have been bored to get clickbaited :-)

For instance this suggestion from the Vagamites landed today...pretty honest and accurate outline of the work involved delivering content plus keeping a boat going and on the move.

One aspect not so honest or they have shit maths/geographic skills is saying they have experienced 50,000 nm. The Med to NZ via Panama in the Mono and now back in the Med in the Cat is 1/3 that at best ie. circumnavigate from Europe via the Capes is around 28K.

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One interesting thing - the diy off gridders were saying that an average films takes them between four and 30 hours to edit.

The Rileys said it was two days

fek! Fek! Fek!

I am a slow thoughtful old bloke using a five year old computer - each film takes me three weeks at least to edit - maybe 50 hours a week.

The script in the last film was 3,000 words - nicely recorded in a decent acoustic

As for quality winning out...that has never been true

Can't beat tits worn by good looking people.

. The fact that the project has gone bust twice and sold two boats I wanted to keeps says everything. I have not filmed anything for the past 18 months - and do not expect to film anything - at best - for another year.

Right now my aim is to make the best of the nine films I have left.... if it ends then... so be it. I have given it my best shot.

I do want to go and see the rest of scotland so my plan is to stick the tender on the roof of the car, buy a two berth touring caravan from ebay for £1000 - put the caravan in a nice trailer park overlooking the sea and explore some of the lochs in the dinghy.

.The re-assuring thing is that the web is always changing, if it shifts back my way then that will be great and I will start again - if it does not then I have my trailer sailer on its £140 a year mooring 100 yards from the house. I will join the other old blokes who schlep up and down the same stretch of estuary drinking coffee and smoking roll-ups. Not a bad result I reckon.

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Quiet day here.... actually watched a few more to see what was going to happen next... they seem to be quite fast learners... and their video skills seem to be improving... already better than mine....

Can't be too stupid to have about half a mill US to buy a boat with..... no matter how they got it...

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Quiet day here.... actually watched a few more to see what was going to happen next... they seem to be quite fast learners... and their video skills seem to be improving... already better than mine....

Can't be too stupid to have about half a mill US to buy a boat with..... no matter how they got it...

sorry

muddled old bloke here

I am pretty good with shit old monohulls up to 28 feet - after that the boats get beyond my reach or interest.

I watched a supercat coming into whitehills harbour

it seemed like a stressful business for all concerned.

I once went on a trip on an Iroquos cat - but that is the beginning and end of my expereince

I have not been to a boat show for decades - way too much shiny new stuff I will never posess

- it is a bit like going to a strip club

- lots of shiny stuff I will never posess.

I am just a jowly old fekker schlepping slowly around a small island

But I enjoy my sailing very much indeed

This is two old blokes having the sail of their lives in scotland at the end of September just before I sold the shit box

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I am pretty good with shit old monohulls up to 28 feet - after that the boats get beyond my reach or interest.

I watched a supercat coming into whitehills harbour

it seemed like a stressful business for all concerned.

I once went on a trip on an Iroquos cat - but that is the beginning and end of my expereince

I have not been to a boat show for decades - way too much shiny new stuff I will never posess

- it is a bit like going to a strip club

- lots of shiny stuff I will never posess.

I am just a jowly old fekker schlepping slowly around a small island

But I enjoy my sailing very much indeed

This is two old blokes having the sail of their lives in scotland at the end of September just before I sold the shit box

I enjoyed your friend, the fisherman sailing the boat. The comedy of him slaying fish, I appreciated. I fish and love to eat them, so it's a necessary evil (unless you let the fishmonger do it). Why is it he doesn't drink? That had to be awkward.

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I enjoyed your friend, the fisherman sailing the boat. The comedy of him slaying fish, I appreciated. I fish and love to eat them, so it's a necessary evil (unless you let the fishmonger do it). Why is it he doesn't drink? That had to be awkward.

he used to.... but found that giving up helped him to sleep better

we have been around each other long enough to be fine.... when in company of other sailors he pretends to drink... which is rather nice of him I think

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Can't be too stupid to have about half a mill US to buy a boat with..... no matter how they got it...

Maybe not be stupid to have money, or maybe had a Aunty die, who knows? They got it yes it but IMHO they have maybe left around 1/3 they paid on the table. From what I have seen they will have a boat or relationship crash around next month.

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and their camera work is excellent - the sound is carefully thought through as well

the reverence for aboriginal scrawls on rock walls I find culturally interesting.

there is too much fish killing for my taste and I wonder what happens to the ecology when they come to tiny creek and take out the top predator which might have been cock of the roost for two decades

but goodonem for taking on an adventure and sharing it.

Dylan

You pacifist! They are killing fish because they are about 1000 miles from the closest grocery store. Id do the same. Sailing the kimberlies is no officially on my bucket list right after the river Deben

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I am not against fishing - my wife is very keen on running a spinner behind the boat - she eats anything she catches. I understand that fish have to die in order for us to eat them. I am just not interested in that part of the process.

I also love a bit of sausage - fnaa fnaa

that does not mean that I want to drag pigs screaming and gasping for air into my cockpit, slaughter them and then grind them up into pork bangers.

As for the Aussies (the best series bar none on the web at the moment - I gave them some cash as a reward):

I agree they are not killing crocks but in many of the little creeks they are exploring and swimming in there are no crocs - but they pull some pretty big fish out of these places. Those big fish are, I am sure the top predator. I eat chickens but I am not that keen on killing the local birds of prey just for fun.

As for justifying it by being 1000 miles from the nearest shop does not really cut the mustard as an excuse either. There is no need to go to these places and kill the local residents. I think it would be better to bring the food with you. Cheese and canned factory farmed meat lasts for your three months away from a shop.

I quite understand that fishing gives people a great deal of pleasure - and one my recent series of films I was travelling with a fisherman. At one point he did this

4.29 in this film

As I said in the script - I have known Jon for half a century and I have never seen him so happy. He spent the rest of the day in a sort of glow of contentment.

All that said, any angling is better than dredging - which is, in my head, the height of human folly.

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there is too much fish killing for my taste and I wonder what happens to the ecology when they come to tiny creek and take out the top predator which might have been cock of the roost for two decades

Dylan

Dylan. I spend a lort of time in the Kimberley. The Kimberley is a delicate ecosystem. Even though the numbers sailing through are still relatively low the impact of fish numbers is already evident.

The first to go are the Estuary Cod. Being non pelagic, dopey, and very hungry, once fished out they take years to recover. They are very easy to catch. If you are not hooking up on this species in a creek system you know it has been hammered.

Big black lipped oysters ( the saucer sized species) are no where near as prolific as 30 years ago. Simply too easy for the punters to bash off the rocks at low tide.

Don't get me wrong ,its still easy to get a feed in the Kimberly's, but the newbies don't understand that the resource is not endless and dumping your cans, bottles and rubbish over the side cause you are too fukn dumb to deal with it responsibly , no matter how many holes you bash in the cans or how small you smash up the bottles, DOESN"T MAKE IT DISAPPEAR.

Righto, I'll get off my soap box now.

3

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I knew it hurt you to see your friend killing those mackerel. But you allowed him his joy, which was nice of you. I don't like killing anything, who does? But fishing, the act of holding a rod in your hand, and catching fish, is primeval man.

I still carry a few rods and one 'meat stick (stout short rod and reel),' in a locker on the boat. I don't fish much along the coast of Maine, anymore. There's not much to catch thanks to all the dragging we allowed along our coast over the last century.

I do enjoy watching anglers enjoying themselves. The only fish you can still catch along my coast, are the lowly mackeral. They come in with a vengeance and locals and visitors alike cast their lines into the sea.

I enjoy the fishing ports in New England. You can always find the anglers, if you look closely. This group was casting off the breakwater at Menemsha off MV, at sunset.

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They came along maybe two years after we started surfing there and it certainly wasn't a secret for long. It was actually an inferior wave that caused many to bypass it for better waves off Java. However it was closer to Bali so more convenient.

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Dylan. I spend a lort of time in the Kimberley. The Kimberley is a delicate ecosystem. Even though the numbers sailing through are still relatively low the impact of fish numbers is already evident.

The first to go are the Estuary Cod. Being non pelagic, dopey, and very hungry, once fished out they take years to recover. They are very easy to catch. If you are not hooking up on this species in a creek system you know it has been hammered.

Big black lipped oysters ( the saucer sized species) are no where near as prolific as 30 years ago. Simply too easy for the punters to bash off the rocks at low tide.

Don't get me wrong ,its still easy to get a feed in the Kimberly's, but the newbies don't understand that the resource is not endless and dumping your cans, bottles and rubbish over the side cause you are too fukn dumb to deal with it responsibly , no matter how many holes you bash in the cans or how small you smash up the bottles, DOESN"T MAKE IT DISAPPEAR.

Righto, I'll get off my soap box now.

I was up there in the 1980's doing fish surveys for the Commonwealth. The fish life & abundance was amazing. One of these days I plan to return on my own boat so I can stooge along at my own pace. No idea how the fish abundance has changed. Back then we'd troll a lure behind us and as soon as we got a decent sized fish to eat we'd knock off fishing. It never took long.

I don't mind this couple fishing for food, the catch & release tends to annoy me though. It's too much like playing with dumb animals using sharp pointy things for my comfort. And I used to fish back in those days with a kilometer of gillnet - we'd do a 15 minute shot as we were trying not to kill too much, we were after species identification and tagging a lot of sharks.

As for cans & bottles, yeah, if you can haul it in there full, you can take it out with you. Dumping it overside simply isn't acceptable.

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I was up there in the 1980's doing fish surveys for the Commonwealth. The fish life & abundance was amazing. One of these days I plan to return on my own boat so I can stooge along at my own pace.

FuckU2 I was there in the 70's. Lucky to see another boat ever. Think things have changed with the relative explosion of people living up there now courtesy of tourism in places like Broome and mining (was in its infancy)/off shore gas etc.

Not too sure I would like another look to spoil the memory but this couples/Free Range Vids seems to indicate not a lot has changed. Agree with Dylan they are really good vids, disagree with his synopsis of how they live off the land though. More people should become self reliant whether it is food or energy etc when cruising.

The tidal range up there freaked me out more than the crocodiles and isolation shit. Though I did have a connection with someone who was eaten up there a decade after that.

One of the few places on our big orange that make you feel as though you are on a different one.